Mandy stopped talking to me. She was probably busy or mad. Didn’t matter.

  I had the Little Boat, also known as the Feast of Fools Navy. It had been tricked out with a sun roof, so I wasn’t roasting anymore. It was covered with vines and flowers, and three Big Smart Bees tended the garden there.

  I’d love to tell you the boat was tearing the sea to shreds, that the Bees could barely hold on for dear life from our breakneck pace, but it was still the pokey engine the Makers had built, the silent one that had a top speed of a brisk walk.

  Took a bit to get back on my feet. For a while I thought I’d lost vision in my right eye, which is one of my favorite eyes. The Radio kept putting itself together and falling apart again. It was gory and horrible, but had yielded an interesting new capacity…

  Schmendrick took the whole thing in stride, as if she’d known it would happen. Maybe she had. She’d spent a lot of time consoling Cassie; me not so much. I don’t think anything that had happened was a surprise to her.

  Now she was with me in the Little Boat, sleepy and occasionally sipping at what we’d started calling Cazador Cola, an herbal tea Gary and I had brewed, and that the Hunt loved. The Little Boat had an appropriately-placed cup holder and Schmendrick had discovered the incredible Human invention of the drinking straw.

  “Radio, alert us if it tries to attack again.”

  “Reassurance filled Owen as he remembered the new security measures were firmly in place.” It spoke from two necklaces: one on me, the other on Schmendrick.

  Our little oopsy with Mandy had revealed the Radio could split itself and function from tiny fragments. The Radio itself appeared to have had no idea of this ability, and seemed to enjoy it: custom content for each fragment. Instant communication with infrequent advertisements.

  The little stone around my neck, a black irregular triangle bound in silver wire from Art Deco. The Radio itself was there, a tiny gem of speaker, tuner and knob. Also present was one of Gary’s glowbeans and a tiny golden needle of a stiletto from someone I thought of as the Dowager of Bees. I also had a folded pair of spare board shorts upon which Shmendrick reclined.

  Cassie had painted little purple fish and hearts on Schmendrick’s new life vest. The two of us were loaded with tokens of our constituents, that was for sure.

  I stroked Schmendrick’s neck. “Thanks for looking after Cassie, sweetie. She loves you.”

  “We love Cassie,” Schendrick said around her straw. “She’s horrible, though. Gray tar.”

  “What gray tar? What’s that, something she likes to eat?”

  “Cassie gets covered with gray tar. Gets it all over the bed, all over us too. Smells wrong, acts confused afterwards. Jumps in the ocean to clean it up, then runs inside to clean up the bed. Doesn’t remember. Don’t all humans do it?”

  “No! What are you talking about? I never do that!”

  “You haven’t been all-the-way Human for some time, Owen.”

  “Thank you, that’s very kind. But gray tar? What about that, seriously?”

  “Ask her if it bothers you.” She sipped from her Cola. “Can’t keep track of everything, can I?”

  “You don’t understand, that’s freaky–”

  The Radio interrupted: “Incoming communications from the Aegis Medelae, directed towards the Steward of the Observatory.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Not interested, can you summarize?”

  “Indignant threats. Warning of violated territory.”

  “According to plan. Let me know when the first attack hits, please. Thanks, Radio, no response from us yet.”

  “Roger Wilco.”

  There it was, the big floating stone donut itself, visible as we slowly rounded one of the many little islands here. Aegis Medelae, it turns out, was Harry Potter latin for “Shield of Health,” or “Shield of Cures.”

  It was what I needed.

  We got closer. And there it was again, the rising note, the one that had killed a Maker as it had been helping me. We’d loaded ourselves with magical protection: runes on ourselves, on the Little Boat, on Schmendrick’s life vest, on chunks of spacetime itself linked to the Boat. We’d practiced attacking ourselves with all sorts of magical means, and we were basically Fort Knox by now.

  Never again.

  The rising note, the weapon that had killed the Maker that day, ceased. The Aegis sat there in the air, doing nothing, rather foolishly if you ask me. Could a floating colosseum look foolish?

  The Radio spoke. “The Aegis Medelae was asking us, somewhat in a spirit of confusion, what we wanted.”

  By now I could see it quite clearly. The Greco-Roman columns, the little alcoves containing statues. I hadn’t been able to see them clearly the first time I’d been here.

  But today? I’d been learning from Schmendrick. I was able to form a lens of sorts, one that finally allowed me to fix my nearsightedness. It hovered in front of my face, an invisible compression of air that refracted the way I needed it to, allowing me to adjust it and get the sharpness I’d been missing since coming to the Slice.

  Nobody had repaired the holes we’d made in it last time. The branches and jungle on top still thrived. Unkempt. Overgrown. Messy.

  I remembered the statues from before. The alcoves contained those, all right. Nonhuman ones. Gaunt, stately beings, tall and quadrupedal. Their long heads were antlered, but also had things that read as elephant tusks sprouting from their jaws. They weren’t tusks, though. They were arms that ended in appendages like hands. And the hands held scrolls, instruments, were in poses of alien statescraft. Elk people. The same flavor of guys who’d built the Observatory.

  I put my necklace on Schmendrick so it wouldn’t take any damage. “Don’t sing, okay? Just me. And a one, and a two–”

  I began the song. We’d found it in the Library, the one holding Many Secrets in the Observatory. The password to the Aegis Medelae had been easy to find with the help of the Radio; over here, down in that cabinet, unroll this scroll, learn the words, recite over and over. No problem.

  I could tell it was successful because the center of the stone ring hovering in the air started blazing, a ball of angry red lightning, whipping and flickering. I kept singing. This one didn’t have ee-yagh in there, it had a kind of whistle I had to make by cupping my hands and sort of hooting into them. It had taken me forever to get it right.

  I jumped into the ocean. The red lightning hit, and hit hard. I was, once again, barbecued. But I’d been ready for it, knowing it would happen, and the seawater cooled my skin. If the salt in the water made a difference I couldn’t tell. Pain was pain.

  My skin was being etched once more, emblazoned with the terrible moving marks, the hot brands of Stewardship. It went on, it seemed to me, for some time, and then finally petered out.

  I inspected the backs of my hands. Two sets of moving marks: one red, one green. Merry Christmas.

  The three Big Smart Bees coldly patrolled the water, weapons out. “Okay?” Schmendrick called from the boat. She was watching me over the rail, ears up, eyes wide. “I want to go home. Didn’t need Bad Cop after all.”

  I shot her a thumbs up, floating there on my back. I was in a cloud of ash; the board shorts I’d been wearing, a significant portion of my hair, my shoes. Gone. Naked again, like Mandy tended to be. Heh-heh…

  Mandy. Yes.

  I clambered back into the boat, put on the spare pair of shorts, my necklace. Always ready, that’s me. No shoes, though; hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  The voice of the Aegis Medelae hooted and gonged from up there. The Radio translated.

  "Lo, the mantle of Stewardship falls upon thy shoulders. Pray tell, what grand design shall we now pursue together, dear keeper?"

  I didn’t shout at it. I was able to augment my voice in the same way I’d dealt with nearsightedness.

  “You’re coming with us,” I said. My voice echoed from its stone walls. “Welcome to the Feast of Fools.”